The Indian Premier League continues on Thursday when it rolls back into Hyderabad as the Sunrisers Hyderabad look to move into second place in the IPL 2024 table when they host rock bottom Royal Challengers Bangalore.
These two sides have had very different campaigns so far and one will be aiming to go all the way to the title from here while the other is already looking at the remainder of the competition to save face and restore some pride.
Sunrisers Hyderabad
This has been a much better season for the Sunrisers Hyderabad compared to the last couple whatever happens over the second part of their campaign, however they will be looking to capitalise on a strong first half of the season to launch a bid for the title. The Sunrisers have won five of their seven matches and generally when they have won they have destroyed the opposition bowling and put up scores which were impossible to chase down.
I think at some point over the second part of the season Sunrisers will want their bowling to improve. It hasn’t really cost them dearly yet but they have conceded 200 or more in three of their seven matches and 199 in another. Their batting has been brutal and they are hitting sixes for fun and if that unit can keep up what they are going then it really isn’t going to matter about their bowling but the question is whether they can keep it up as pitches tire.
Royal Challengers Bangalore
This is going to be another season of nothingness for the Royal Challengers Bangalore. They would have to win out from here to have any chance of reaching the postseason but even then they have most likely left it too late so their campaign could easily fizzle out. The big concern looking from afar is they don’t ever appear to have addressed the issues they have had in the past. To be fair, Reece Topley was a good signing but he just hasn’t bowled as well as they would have liked.
Once again though they have gone into a season way too reliant on their top three, had little of note from their middle order apart from the odd individual performance here or there, and generally when a team has got on top of them they have gone for plenty when they have bowled. They have conceded more than 180 in their last six matches and regardless of the state of your batting unit you just can’t keep winning games doing that.
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Key Players
Travis Head has very quickly turned himself into the most important player in this Sunrisers Hyderabad batting unit. He is blitzing bowlers during the powerplay and because Hyderabad bat so deep he has no reason to stop being aggressive once the field goes back.
It looks like Royal Challengers Bangalore have turned to Will Jacks in the absence of Glenn Maxwell and the Englishman has a big role to play. His pyrotechnics with the bat is needed but if he can just slow down the Sunrisers with an over or two of his off spin it would help.
Betting
I am expecting a high scoring match here. These two bowling attacks have spent the season going around the park and given that we have only had two matches on this ground, the last of which was 20 days ago the pitch here should be perfect for batting. These two sides have already met in Bangalore this season where 287/3 played 262/7 and while it would be folly to expect a match with more than 500 runs and the 81 boundaries that had in it, I still expect a high scoring game.
The question then is how to attack the match from a betting point of view. To be fair the sixes lines when the Sunrisers Hyderabad are concerned are going so high that the wiggle room I would like has gone. It is 20.5 for this one which is a little high. The 51.5 boundaries is of more interest to me but I’m going to take a chance on there being more than 400 runs in the match. This has happened in four of the seven Hyderabad matches and the last two Bangalore ones. If that boundary line gets covered in just fours we would be on 208 with another 188 balls left in the match so we would barely need a run a ball from the other deliveries. There will be sixes in this one so I think taking almost double the price of the boundaries for 400+ runs might be the value play.
Tips
Back 400+ match runs for a 3/10 stake at 2.75 with Coral
